Dark Magician Deck #761689 — Yu-Gi-Oh! Duel Links

Deck — Deck Power Evaluation

Final Contextual Deck Power: 59/100 (±6 · Confidence: Medium)

• Primary strategy: Combo
• Secondary strategies: Midrange, Stun
• Format: duel-links

Legality

Main 30 / Extra 8 / Side 0 — status: Legal.

Identity & game plan

• Win condition: Fusion Summon Dark Magician boss monsters (Dragon Knight, Dark Paladin, Dragoon, Dark Magician of Destruction) from the Extra Deck off Dark Magician and Magicians' Souls setup, then attack for pressure.; Ritual Summon Illusion of Chaos and Timaeus-based Fusion lines to add board presence when the Extra Deck is partly blocked.
• Turn 1 (going first): Open with Dark Magician-named starters (Magicians' Souls, Magician's Rod, Soul Servant, Dark Magical Circle) to search and set up Fusion material, then convert on T2 with Extra Deck monsters.
• Turn 2 (going second): Use Droll & Lock Bird and Forbidden Droplet to answer the opponent's first board, then rebuild the Dark Magician core from the GY or hand and Fusion Summon into a large attacker.
• Recovery: Recover from one interruption through Soul Servant and Magicians' Souls draws, Eternal Soul and Magicians' Combination as protection, and recursion of Dark Magician-named cards from the GY.
• After siding: Not applicable: Duel Links has no side deck in this export, so there is no post-side plan.

Why it scores here

The deck's core engine is almost always present in the opening hand (archetype-core proxy P(at least one in 5) = 0.9996), but any single named starter is only about 43% per 5-card hand, so Dark Magician consistency rests on redundancy across several starters rather than on one card. Its strongest conversion is the Extra Deck: several 2800-3000 ATK Fusion bosses, plus Dark Paladin and Dark Magician of Destruction for interaction, give a high closing ceiling. Interruption resilience comes from Eternal Soul, Magicians' Combination, and recursion through Soul Servant and Magicians' Souls, which scores the deck's ability to continue after disruption. Real recorded boards are absent, so the median and ceiling are text-based inferences and the score does not come from averaging card scores or from Dark Magician being a popular archetype; meta-share earned no points. The score is held down by brick risk from hand traps and tech cards that need specific board states, and by 20 off-archetype copies that dilute the engine.

Dimension scores

How the score was computed

Strategy profile: Combo (D13 dropped and renormalized: meta-neutral). Structural ≈ 62, Going First ≈ 64, Going Second ≈ 56, Meta = provisional, Tournament Reliability ≈ 58. Modifiers: engine conflicts (-2). Final formula: 0.80*Structural + 0.20*TournamentReliability (Meta provisional) + ContextModifiers(-2)

Probability & combo summary

• Opening a starter: P(≥1) ≈ 0.43 · key two-card combo ≈ — · full-brick estimate ≈ — (all Inferred)
• Combo output: best PowerIndex —, median —, board-per-starter —
• Turn order: 0 going-first lines vs 0 going-second lines

Strengths

• Archetype-core density makes a Dark Magician-named card almost always present in the opening hand
• Extra Deck of 6 Fusion and 2 Link monsters offers multiple 2800-3000 ATK closers
• Layered interaction: Droll & Lock Bird, Forbidden Droplet, Eternal Soul, Magicians' Combination, Dark Magic Attack
• Recursion routes (Soul Servant, Magicians' Souls, Magician's Rod) give interruption resilience

Weaknesses

• Single-card starters are only about 43% per 5-card hand
• Hand traps and tech cards are dead without a specific board state
• Only 47.4% of main-deck copies are exact Dark Magician-named
• Overlapping off-archetype cards (Timaeus, Illusion of Chaos, Forbidden Droplet) compete for slots

Critical choke points

• Dependence on Dark Magician and Magicians' Souls as Fusion material
• Eternal Soul and Magicians' Combination as the main protection against single removal
• Droll & Lock Bird as the only lock-style interaction

Recommended changes

Evidence & confidence

• Verified: Main 30 and Extra 8 within Duel Links size rules (main 20-30, extra 0-9); All distinct cards Unlimited under BanDuelLink; no copy-limit violations; Card stats and Extra Deck breakdown (6 Fusion, 2 Link); Exact-name purity 47.4%; Archetype core inclusion stats from usage_statistics
• Inferred: Starter and archetype-core consistency probabilities; Interaction density from card text; Going-first and going-second split estimates; Recovery and resilience ratings from card text
• Provisional: Meta Power (null); Matchup and format fit (D13); Post-side plan (not applicable)
• Data gaps: no combos supplied: combo floor, median and ceiling are text-only inference no tournament link: archetype meta-share and per-pilot match record absent no win-rate telemetry: going-first, going-second, matchup and brick rates are Inferred or Unknown Meta Power is Provisional unless a dated metagame sample is supplied Data conflict: usage_statistics marks Master of Chaos, Red-Eyes Dark Dragoon, Dark Magician of Destruction, Dark Magician the Dragon Knight, The Dark Magicians and Underworld Goddess as in_this_deck=false, but cards lists them in zone extra; the resolved card list was treated as the source of truth Duel Links has no side deck, so D12 is neutral and not evidence-based deck title is null